It's not a bad way to close out the evening, and if he dawdles a bit toward the end, stretching the last half hour to it's really about as simple as the facts. This dinner and Cath might be the last great parts of his night. When everything after this is about going back to that place that slides, oiled slick and sour, through his head and his stomach as those two words.

It is everything but home. And it's been there only a few years. Back on the island. In that place every day.
So no one would hold it against him if he held on an extra half hour to something that been with him much longer.

But the night still comes to end and he still follows her out. There's still a hug that reminds him that she light and whip-cord fit, soft and smells familiar. Safe and simple absolutely nothing has been since he got back to this island from across the world. For all the good and bad ways that thought can go.

Even while he's rolling his eyes and hamming it up, insinuating an insult about preferential treatment for the sexes and how it's supposed to be null and void. Where they work. Like they are, like everything in the world is. And maybe it always is in some part of his head. But he's saying it, and getting her to smile, even as he's getting the door and seeing her off.

Before there are all the last second words, about calling if he needs anything, and not to forget to send her the details for the dinner. Before's he's watching the blue car drive away with Cath leaving him standing in the parking lot, feeling his mood from dinner evaporate from him the way air conditioning is eradicated from the skin, both by pieces and all at once, when you step out into the sun.

Standing there only the half minute of watching her car vanish before heading for his truck.